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Gender-Ambiguous Voices and Social Disfluency
Shahryar Mohsenin1, Kurt P Munz1
1Department of Marketing, Bocconi University.
Psychological Science
|April 15, 2024
Summary
Gender-ambiguous voices in voice assistants may cause negative reactions due to unfamiliarity, leading to less favorable product ratings. Increased exposure can help overcome these initial social disfluency effects.
Area of Science:
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Psychology
- Sociolinguistics
Background:
- Voice assistants increasingly incorporate gender-ambiguous (nonbinary) voices to promote inclusivity and challenge gender stereotypes.
- Negative user reactions to these voices could undermine their intended benefits, potentially proving counterproductive.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate user reactions to gender-ambiguous voices in voice assistants.
- To understand the psychological mechanisms behind these reactions and explore potential solutions.
Main Methods:
- Five preregistered studies involving 3,684 adult participants.
- Participants rated products described by narrators with gender-ambiguous, male, or female voices.
- Evaluated subjective feelings of unease and familiarity.
Main Results:
- Products described by gender-ambiguous voices were rated less favorably than those described by male or female voices.
- A feeling of unease, termed 'social disfluency,' was associated with gender-ambiguous voices.
- Lower familiarity with ambiguous voices best explained the negative evaluations.
Conclusions:
- Initial negative reactions to gender-ambiguous voices are common and linked to social disfluency.
- These negative effects appear to stem from low familiarity, suggesting that increased exposure may mitigate them.
- Further exposure could improve user acceptance of nonbinary voices in technology.
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